Economy in Brief: 2015

Japan's industrial production index rose by 1.4% in October, pushing the three-month growth rate up to 5.4% annual rate. Manufacturing now has two consecutive monthly gains of more than 1%. Still, growth is negative on balance over [...]

The EU overall sentiment index slipped this month while the index for EMU members was dead flat at last month's level. The EU index sits in the 71st percentile of its historic queue of data. The EMU index is a bit weaker, standing in [...]

Retail sales volumes and consumer confidence in Italy have recovered much better than has the Italian industrial sector. Italian orders fell for the second month in a row. Italian foreign orders have fallen in each of the last three- [...]

Sales of new single-family homes increased 10.7% during October to 495,000 (AR) from 447,000 in September, revised from 468,000. The gain left sales up 4.9% y/y but unchanged since December. Sales of 500,000 had been expected in the [...]

The U.S. House Price Index from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) increased 0.8% in September (6.1% y/y). This gain followed a much more modest 0.3% in August and was indeed the strongest monthly increase since March 2013. For [...]

Consumers are exhibiting cautious spending behavior despite firm income gains. Personal consumption expenditures improved 0.12% (2.9% y/y) in October, the same as September's 0.08% rise which was unrevised. These were the smallest [...]

Durable goods orders started the third quarter strongly, jumping up 3.0%/m (0.5% y/y) in October against an expectation (Action Economics Forecast Survey) of a 1.5% m/m increase. And the 1.2% m/m decline initially reported for orders [...]

Initial claims for unemployment insurance unexpectedly fell to 260,000 in the week ending November 21 from a slightly upwardly revised 272,000 the previous week. The Action Economics Forecast Survey had looked for an unchanged reading [...]